


midnight thoughts

by deputymercury



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Anxiety, Child Abuse, Dave-centric, Depression, Gen, Heavy Angst, Mental Health Issues, Overthinking, Paranoia, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, it's nothing but angst, seriously read the tags this gets dark, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-24 17:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15635028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deputymercury/pseuds/deputymercury
Summary: No, there’s nothing to fix in him; he’s not broken. He might be half-assedly glued together and sharp at the edges where pieces have chipped off, but not fragmented in any way. And that’s why he has his habit. He can hold himself together as long as he has control.





	midnight thoughts

John once jokingly asks Dave if he ever sleeps. Despite the timezones and the late hours his friends often message him at, Dave almost always answers; he credits it to his ‘well-honed bro instincts.’ Striders don’t need sleep anyway, he tells John, and the conversation continues.

Once John has logged off, he lies back against the pillow and shuts his phone off, leaving the room in darkness. The ceiling stares back at him, blank and dull. He remembers a time when his bed was directly below the ceiling vent. When he was eleven, his bro decided it would be a good idea to play back the sounds of his puppets’ whispers in the airway, laughing and mocking Dave. Six months later, he dangled Cal from the vent in near-darkness, just enough light coming from the crack in the door to shine off the puppet’s glassy blue eyes.

After that, Dave moved his bed as far from the vent as possible. But he can still hear the chuckling some nights.

He knows he won’t sleep, and it’s futile to try, but Striders never give up, or so Bro says. Striders aren’t losers, and he doesn’t want to be a loser, does he?

Dave pulls the sheets closer to himself, the edges all tucked around him. When his thoughts drift, sometimes he’ll wonder if something is crawling under the sheets to grab his foot, and he’ll jolt out of his daze almost immediately. The unpleasant thoughts always get to him in the night. It’s ironic; the only time he has solace from Bro is when he feels most paranoid.

He sits up in bed and stares into nothing. The silence is too much; it goads him into thinking too hard, and then all the shadows seem too tall and angular, as if they’re not shadows at all but someone lurking in the dark, waiting for him to drop his guard. Sometimes when his head drives itself in circles, he truly believes that Bro is there with his katana, poised with all the grace of a true Strider. He’ll ask Dave if he’s up for battle, and Dave always says yes, because he’s not a quitter; no proper Strider is supposed to be. He can’t afford to give in, not even when his body is already half mangled and bruised and begs to stay curled up in one desolate corner of his room.

Dave slips out of bed and pulls his old, ragged bathrobe over himself. Bro could buy him a new one, but bathrobes aren’t especially cool, especially not moth-eaten ones with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on them. He heads towards his dresser and searches through the pairs of boxers, finally locating the only green pair and pulling a small bag from it.

Striders don’t need any assistance or pity; they handle it on their own. Reaching out is always a sign of weakness and fault. Dave knows how to tackle his own problems like a star quarterback during the Superbowl. It’s just not nearly as conventional as other methods, though it helps hold him together.

He’s not one of those types to go anywhere and everywhere; Dave has unspoken rules when it comes to his habit, of course. First rule is calling it a habit, not a coping mechanism or any of that bullshit. No reason to make it sound worse than it is. The second is that it should never be obvious; God forbid anyone find out, because he knows they’d mock him for it, laughing and pointing, saying, _“Look, what an attention seeker!”_ and then they'd high-five themselves for saying something so totally original.

Dave doesn’t want that kind of attention. He needs the opposite, actually. Dragging everyone into his wild and borderline abusive episodes of _Keeping up with the Striders_ won’t fix anything-- no, there’s nothing to fix in him; he’s not broken. He might be half-assedly glued together and sharp at the edges where pieces have chipped off, but not fragmented in any way. And that’s why he has his habit. He can hold himself together as long as he has control.

He opens the bag. Inside lies a small razor and several bandages; the dull razors are the ones buried below the more important items. Dave can remember the first razor; it was from a pencil sharpener he dug out from his school supplies. The next was a set of small, industrial razors he bought at the store along with several dozen purchases so the cashier wouldn’t give him any weird looks. He’s on the third from the set.

The air conditioning starts up, and he nearly jumps out of his skin, flinching once the noise comes on. There is some rattling from the vents. Dave stuffs the bag back into the drawer, then closes it as quickly and quietly as he can. He can’t have Bro seeing him like this. Striders aren’t weak. They don’t feel panic or anguish like other people do. He tells himself that even as his heart thuds like a drum in his chest, threatening to burst free.

He waits, counting to sixty in his head, but Bro does not arrive. Usually he would have struck by then. With blood still roaring in his ears, Dave fishes out the bag from his dresser again and heads towards his bed. Sometimes his habit takes place there, in case he worries that Bro is near or might burst in on him in the bathroom.

Dave pulls out the blade. Don’t make it obvious, he tells himself. Sometimes he’ll litter the cuts here and there on his legs and arms, never in rows, always overlapping with scars from strifes. That way they look just like the ones he receives in strifes. He already gets people asking where the battle scars came from, anyway, to which he usually responds with a long-winded story about his quest into a wardrobe to battle some ice bitch, often delivered in rap form. Worse still are the stares and whispers he can sense just out of what they think is his earshot. The things they mutter, the words they think he can’t hear-- they come back at times like these, echoing in his head until he can’t take it anymore.

He hates it, oh God, he hates it so much he can’t put it into words or even a funky fresh rap that he claims is ‘ironically suicidal.’ (Dave never shares those with his friends; they lie waiting in a password-protected file on his computer.) The paranoia that something is always lurking around the corner keeps him alert and always on guard, even when his insides feel hazy and his brain has turned to fog, even when he wants more than anything to just collapse. His thoughts taunt him, running over everything he’s ever done wrong again and again, until it’s a shitty YouTube video titled ‘Hilarious! All of Dave Strider’s Epic Failures Caught on Tape (Not Clickbait!)’ with several laugh-crying emojis. And below all that is the constant urge to just hurl himself off the roof, or let Bro’s katana slash into him until he’s nothing but a bloody mess, or curl up in his bed and allow the thoughts to gnaw at him, granting him death via intense spikes of his heart rate. The thoughts make him want to claw his eyes out.

But he can’t give in, not now, not ever. Not because he is an everlasting hero like his brother, but because he has people that care, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons. Dave will keep going because he needs to be that late-night person for his friends, someone to talk to when their thoughts drown everything else. He will try his very hardest to be the hero they need, even if all the jokes and irony he puts up is one big fat lie to conceal the fact that he is an ugly and worthless person deep down, fabricating a whole new identity so he’ll look good enough for them. God, he is such a liar. He should end it already. He’s a coward if he does it, though, and a coward if he doesn’t. He can’t win. There’s never an easy way out.

He pulls the side of his pajama pants and boxers down so that his left hip is visible. When Dave wants to do as much damage as he pleases without giving a damn about anyone seeing it, he goes for the hips. No one will see him naked, anyway. No one likes a fraud, especially not one injuring himself in the middle of the fucking night while wearing a lame bathrobe. But that’s who he is, a big fat fake, running on and on from his issues until they finally catch up to finish him off. But he won’t die today.

He’s in control right now.

He raises the blade.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if the self harm seems unrealistically portrayed. I tried combining my past experiences with what I think Dave's personal experience would be. Also, this is something of a vent fic, so I apologize if it appears poorly written. I'm alright now but I figured it was worthy of sharing. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
